What's the Matter with Kansas? : How Conservatives Won the Heart of America

Rating:
Summary: A Classic Treatise on American Life
Review: Thomas Frank deftly flays the corporate party and shows how and why people who have the least to gain lend the greatest support to the process of their own impoverishment. Frank opens the door to a world of writers whose ideological fixation on tearing down the New Deal is adding fuel to destructive social movements that bifurcate the population. It's divide and conquer all over again. In this regard, there are a number of texts that augment Frank's analysis, i.e., "Banana Republicans" among others. I'm buying an extra copy for confused friends and family.

Rating:
Summary: Thomas Frank is mad as hell
Review: Thomas Frank is mad as hell. Frank is a Liberal, an old-fashioned capital-L Liberal, that is to say a democratic socialist. He hails from Kansas, which he defensively points out has historically been a radical, liberal place. Think abolition, prohibition, labor unions. The reason he is mad is that Kansas is now known as a bastion of the religious right and a reliably Republican "red state" widely ridiculed for demanding that "creationism" be taught on an equal basis with evolution is its public schools. While Frank isn't bothered by the religious fundamentalism, admitting it has always been a part of Kansas, the Republicanism drives him crazy. But this book is not just another rant from the left about the successful ascendancy of the right. Frank cares deeply about Kansas and Kansans, and his frustration is that the economic policies of the Republicans have devastated his native state, yet Kansans seem to get only more virulently Republican. To make matters worse, Kansans of all people should know better, having a century old tradition of liberalism

Frank does a masterful job of describing how the Republicans have cobbled together a majority of voters, bringing in traditionally Democratic working class citizens to join their traditional base of wealthy business interests. They have done this, in Kansas and elsewhere, despite promoting economic policies that Frank credibly argues run counter to the self-interests of those newly Republican working class voters. I think his explanation of how this happened is compelling, and has changed the way I view the current political landscape. For example, no one persuaded by Frank's views would argue that for Democrats to win back a national majority, they must move toward the center. In fact, Senator Kennedy's annual state of liberalism address, delivered this week at the National Press Club, must have cheered Frank that someone is listening - and thinking.

Frank spends far too much time dwelling on Kansans and Kansas politics to hold the interest of anyone outside the Sunflower State. The book could have been 120 pages shorter and just as effective. However, it is rewarding to persevere through this.

The summary of Franks' argument can be found on pages 239-242 of the epilogue. Anyone interested in the current political landscape should at least stop by their local bookseller and read these few pages. In even briefer summary form: the Republicans have convinced a significant group of working class voters that the primary problem facing our society is moral decline, and that said decline must be blamed on the liberal intellectuals who control almost everything important - the media, the arts, the universities, and government bureaucracies. This intellectual, liberal elite is unpatriotic, in fact they despise America as it is, and most of all despise evangelical Christians and other conservative people of faith. Oh, and they control the Democratic Party.

If you know evangelical Christians, like I do, you understand that when the specter of morality is raised they can be whipped into a frenzy. Indeed they have done so with amazing success, not only in Kansas but throughout the South and the Middle West. Frank argues that the short-term economic polices of the Bush administration, particularly tax cuts, have only benefited a select few (the already wealthy), and have been implemented to the detriment of working class people, many of whom reliably vote Republican. Despite this, they have assembled a majority large enough to re-elect the most vulnerable sitting President in modern history.

On the other side of the political spectrum, the Democrats have lost a reliable block of voters who were Democratic out of economic self-interest: the labor unions. Before churches became the political centers for many working class white people, it was the unions that mobilized these voters. As unions fell into precipitous decline, the Democratic base atrophied. As evangelicalism has grown, a large class of people who in the past would have been reliably democratic due to union influence has become reliably Republican due to Church influence. The Republicans have been brilliantly effective at supplementing the moral outrage message of the churches with their own media outlets (Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, etc.) that blame everything that bothers these good working class folk on the liberal elites. The working class folks who were so reliably Democratic out of economic self-interest have shifted to form a new Republican majority out of moral outrage.

While I suspect that Frank's explanation about what happened in Kansas is somewhat too simplistic to fully explain the new Republican majority, it is a major element of any through analysis. I think he is dead accurate in describing a significant chunk of the new Republican majority and how it materialized.


Rating:
Summary: Straight from the pages of the New Republic.
Review: What I need is a Republican like Arnold Schwarzenegger who can walk up to Frank and punch him in the face. This guy isn't a harmless lefy. I don't want Nancy Pelosi talking sense to him; I want John Ashcroft to come busting through the wall with a submachine gun to round him up for an immediate trip to Gitmo, with Charles Graner on hand for interrogation. Maybe sometimes you just want to be on the side of whoever is more likely to take a bunker buster to Thomas Frank.

Rating:
Summary: Finally, a book that addresses the voter itself
Review: You've probably seen most books out there that, while truthful and informative, speak little about why the average Joe blow resigns himself or herself to it. Yes, it's fun and really helpful to read books like those from Molly Ivins that talk about Bush's (as well as the rest of the repug's) cronyisms but without answering the question as to why voters choose such politicians, most of these books are useless. Thomas Frank however kicks one step forward but actually talking to average voters who admit that this was how they stuck to voting for the heartless republican over anyone else even when it was obvious that those voters who put these fascist Republicans into office are going to be steamrolled the next day. For example, Bush and the media are now happy to push for privatization of social security, budget cuts to most domestic programs including farm subsidies that are going to further smash us heartlanders especially in my state of ND that has been struggling to fight off the ill effects of free trade thanks to Reagan's US-Canada free trade agreement that passed in 1985 which you won't hear about in the current Bush media and Clinton's NAFTA in 1994. Thomas Frank nails the DLC wing of the Democratic Party for writing off the economy and especially so with the passage of NAFTA signed by Clinton in 1994. In addition, the inevitable passing of Bush's CAFTA which would put the final nail in the coffin is now ready to pass in 2005 but you won't hear the Bush media even talk about it. Frank points out that in addition to the Republicans marketing their false conservative populism to the working class, the Democrats and moderate Republicans ,out of want for money and trying to be the other corporate guy who is liberal on social issues at best, happily wrote off the economy and turned off voters' general interests leaving them to decide only on cultural bs such as abortion, guns, gays, flag-burning, patriotism, terrorism, you name it. Just right after the election, Thomas Frank was on C-SPAN brilliantly pointing out how the GOP won. If for example, John Kerry hadn't wasted $25 million on advertizing a personal ad on his military service during Vietnam War in 20 states but had saved that money for running a 50 state campaign concentrating on general issues such as economy, healthcare, privacy rights, manufacturing and food safety which he barely discussed, more inspiring ideas about a cleaner environment that would have motivated us to think more about it, etc ... he could have crushed George W. Bush even with his pinky. Instead, Kerry like virtually every Democrat running for president did wrote off huge portions of this wonderful country giving us voters little to think about. Now I voted for Kerry with my nose held tight but obviously not the other 51% of the voters. All Thomas Frank and lots of us average voters even in the reddest of states are asking is that you Democrats get back to the general issues and stop running pandering "independent conservatives" or you'll continue to lose.

Thank God Howard Dean is here to address this problem as he unlike other DNC chairs continues to push for running campaigns in all 50 states and acting more principled than spineless !

P.S.: Now to kick some 1-3 stars' rear ends.

Re: Smoke and mirrors,
So you like Bush playing smoke and mirrors while trying to desperately accusing us moderates and liberals of trying to do the same? Do you enjoy getting your life ripped apart thanks to the so-called free market which awards the Enrons and the Halliburtons more money for wrong doing? Enjoying the so-called freedom fries that come cheap and tainted? Think you can take over our country like Adolf Hitler did Germany? I say NOT SO FAST !!! We liberals and moderates are keeping it here in America and with Howard Dean as the next DNC chair are going to kick you facists so hard in the rear end you'll need more than a really cold weather up in my state of ND to cool it.

Re:Full of ideas, yet draws out too limply his thesis,

Now that your family has been ray-gun-ized, how do you like the raw deal that Reagan left you and your family with? Are you happy that thanks to Reagan, Osama bin Laden and Saddham Hussein came to power and now Bush is happily dragging this country further into Iraq and possibly other Arab nations further weakening this country? How did and now does it feel when Reagan shut down more hospitals for the mentally ill thereby making it harder for normal people to recover from RAYGUN's lower-and-middle-class-gutting economic program? Or how about promoting ENRON America by killing jobs and increasing obesity and abortions just like Bush is continuing to do? And while we're at it, now that Arnold badly wants to be the next raygun, are you satisfied that your governor of California is running up bigger deficits and kissing up to the Enrons even after it was obvious that it was they and not Gray Davis who are responsible for the energy crisis in the first place?

Re: Straight from the pages of the New Republic.,

I see you're badly wanting a to turn this country into a nazi/communist type. As you know, the New Republic is itself a right-wing puppet that supports Bush. Well, you can keep dreaming fartface because Howard Dean is coming to town and this time not even the Limbaughian Republicans can stop him so sit back and get ready to take a kick in your end !!!
P.S.: Did you ever notice how girlie-man-like Arnold can be especially since he is now despairing that Republicans should move to the left to stay in power ?!?!?!?